So a lot of you have been asking for updates from after the surgery and I have just been in too much pain and too tired to provide it for all of you until now. For those of you who don’t have a clue what is going on, my wonderful beautiful horse Tarik had a sore back and I, thinking that he was over it, was violently disabused of that notion. I prefer to call it an unplanned dismount but really, he bucked me off.

I landed right on my wrist and it only took a glance to see that my mangled arm was broken. My wrist was sticking way out past where it should be. It turns out that I broke my radius, which is the arm bone that comes up on the side of the thumb. The head of the radius broke completely off and much of the bone was turned to “powder” as the doctor put it.

My trip to the arrowhead emergency room was quite painful as they reset bone back together as best as possible and they sent me home saying I would be fine. Never trust an emergency room.

Thankfully my mother was smart enough to insist that we go to an orthopedic specialist at USC. He took one look at the x-ray and said I needed a surgery and that he would do it right now except the swelling was too bad.

When I finally got into surgery, the doctor said it was much more extensive than he thought it was going to be. The surgery took twice as long as expected and he actually said he wished he had thought to have me sign off on a bone graft because I needed it.  I may need to have a second surgery if the bone doesn’t grow back together well enough. If you take a look at the x-ray you can see how much bone is missing.

Happily, they gave me a nerve block after the surgery. This made my arm numb for the first few days. After that wore off, it has been tough. The painkillers have been doing a good job for the most part but I have to be very careful to rest and I have been super duper duper tired from all the stress and pain and drugs.

On Friday I went for a checkup and all the “hardware” is still in place and everything looks good. My hand is very stiff and I will need a lot of physical therapy. My thumb is actually paralyzed right now, I can’t move it at all, although the doctor says with enough manual stretching of my thumb movement should come back.

The check up was very difficult.  They took me out of my cast to check on the incision and to do x-rays.  I was in a lot of pain at the appointment and have been in pain since. It has actually been worse than anytime since the surgery, which makes me very grateful for the nerve block that I had immediately after the surgery!! I can’t imagine how much pain I would have been in.

However all things considered, I am doing pretty well. The doctors think that I am going to heal just fine with full movement and no permanent problems. I am sad that I will not be able to ride a horse again for six months, but I am alive and will be able to ride again without a problem.

The worst part of this whole thing is there’s so much metal in my wrist that I will need to carry a special card with me in order to get through metal detectors!

It has been very difficult keeping the farm going with my arm broken. I am not allowed to do any work and we have mostly been depending on volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering, we desperately need help. Just contact me and I can get you connected to a nice horse that needs its corral mucked or a family of weeds that need to be relocated.

 

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